Monday’s editions of the dailies ‘Het Belang van Limburg’ and ‘Het Nieuwsblad’ report that currently 489 Belgian nationals are incarcerated in foreign prisons. The newspapers base their reports on figures from the Belgian Foreign Ministry.
However, the Belgian Foreign Ministry says that its figures may well be incomplete as the Belgian authorities are not always informed when Belgian nationals are locked up abroad.
Most of the Belgians that are being held in prisons abroad are locked up in jails in neighbouring countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. There are also a number of Belgians doing time in Spain, Italy and Morocco.
In 2023, 504 Belgians were incarcerated in foreign prisons. This compares to 426 in 2022 and 372 in 2021, ‘Het Belang van Limburg’ and ‘Het Nieuwsblad’ report.